


Tangible Reflections

by catadromously



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Family Feels, Gen, Ghost Hunters, Númenor, The Elvish Problem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:35:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29697885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catadromously/pseuds/catadromously
Summary: "This was how the Númenorean artists always painted them: facing each other, symmetrically asymmetrical."In which Elrond pays a visit, admires a view, and deals with literal and figurative ghosts.
Relationships: Elrond Peredhel & Elros Tar-Minyatur
Comments: 6
Kudos: 42





	Tangible Reflections

When the tide retreated, a passage opened beneath the sea-cliffs, dim and quiet. The surveyors had come upon it a week ago, after a high wind swept the shoreline, dislodging boulders and opening the chamber within to a narrow trickle of air. The inside still smelled of brine and ash and rot.

"Go home," implored Elrond. 

The shape before him flickered unsteadily, its face twisting out of sight amid the ragged aura of its hair. It clutched itself tight with inconsistent fingers as if holding its innards in - perhaps this one was stuck, convinced it still had a body to save.

:Never,: it spat, its voice bristling electrically in Elrond's head. His lantern swayed, and he stood his ground. :We shall hold this line to the last elda standing. The tower is ours now and daylight will find it ours still.:

Only an ordinary Noldo then, for all its brightness. It had grown up bathed in Treelight - the clear-burning glow of its eyes betrayed that much - and it had lived its life at war, but a houseless fëa could do little to harm Elrond now.

Meeting its eyes, he followed the thread of its voice back and brushed at its awareness with his own. The ghost hissed, a flame encountering water, but it made no move to cross the chamber's cracked flagstones.

He felt its terrible confusion, its ferocity, its grief. Time or loneliness had corroded away the walls and floors of its mind, leaving Elrond to lean out over a heaving morass of seawater, blood, and snow. It was old, decades dead, and it had forgotten its own name.

To his relief, he discerned that it was no one he knew. 

:Go home,: Elrond repeated in its own fashion, sharpening the esses of his mental voice just in case. :Your war is done and your world is changed, and all your missing ones are avenged. The Hosts of the Light came East to burn the shadows away. Can you not hear the Sea outside?:

The ghost stilled, hunching further in on itself. :The Sea lies far west of here, and no home remains for us across it. Who sent you, boy? Who would say such things?:

:Ereinion Gil-Galad, High King of the Noldor in the West,: Elrond recited. :Yes, he reigns still. Among his ranks I am known as a healer, which is why I've come to you.:

:They will not come to us,: the ghost muttered absently. It seemed to shrink then, and as its mind turned to grapple with Elrond's words, it lost track of its form. Its arms fell to its sides and revealed the gash that split it from shoulder to hip, like a torn-out seam, with only shadow inside. Then, looking down at itself, it took a silent, labored breath, and crumpled backward against the ruins of a column. 

:Look at me,: it said, :A healer cannot save me now. I always did wonder what dying felt like - I expected the darkness, but not this much of it. Do they all say that, when you reach them too late? It's so dark.: Its gaze swung round the room, registering nothing, and finally landing on Elrond's lantern, where moisture and dust in the air blurred the firelight into a silty orange halo.

:Oh,: it whispered. :Your light - bring it closer, please. If I could only see...:

By the time Elrond got to it, picking his way across the debris on the floor, only two guttering lights remained of the fëa's projected face, hovering in the meaningless ripple of its form. He could see, on the ground beneath it, rent metal plates, and bones. :Look your fill,: he told it, holding out his lantern and watching its eyes lock onto the flame.

:I never thought to see light again.:

It had slid very far back, now, to a cold and silent place.

:The world has changed,: Elrond assured. :We may all stand in the light.:

:My family walk just ahead. Find them and bid them go on without me. They are strong. They will make it across. We will, I know we will. We must - : Its hand reappeared and fluttered toward Elrond.

:Ssh. Listen with me, listen. Do you hear the water?:

The ghost raised its head and said nothing. Through the cave, the ocean hushed a long breath, echoing. Elrond remembered how it had pursued them inland, quenching the burning forests and swallowing great chunks of earth as they collapsed into fire. It had settled now, for the most part, so if he wanted he could walk to its edge and toss rocks into the surf, as he had when he was very small. Still, though, he thought, he would rather live by a river.

:I know this song,: the ghost murmured. :Strange, that. How did it get all the way out here?:

:You seem tired.: 

It sent the impression of a bitter laugh and said, :We are all tired.:

"So we are," Elrond agreed softly, daring at last to speak aloud again. "Go home."

The fëa dissolved away with the next receding wave.

Elrond pushed himself to his feet and stood a long time in the dark.

He was getting better at this, he supposed, but that did not make it any more pleasant a task. How long had it taken the fallen Noldo to lose its name? How much longer until it would've forgotten what it was waiting for entirely? As he clambered back toward the open air, he thought again of his brother, and the terrible promises they both had chosen.

\----

Númenor was loud. Even outside the cities, on the wide road that led up from the havens to Armenelos, Elrond heard porters and messengers and fellow-travelers calling out to each other, field-hands singing as they worked. The cobbles juddered, the low trees hissed with wind, and the driver hummed to herself and to her horses. 

But no Edain on the isle could possibly make themselves louder than those in Elros's house.

He barely had time for the staff to show him in before one of the children called out his name and all but barreled into him. This was little Oromendil, Elrond realized as the young Man pulled back to clasp his arm. He had seen twenty-five summers and stood taller now than Elrond himself. His father Nolondil came close behind, greeting him with far more restraint but no less volume.

Shortly thereafter followed Mairen, along with her favorite cousins, Aulendil's twins (or were they Atanalcar's grandchildren?). Eärendur met them down the hall, already eager for news from the hither shore. He took particular interest in Elrond's story of Lindon's recent business with the great Dwarvish city to the east.

"Parmaitë!" he called. "Uncle Elrond says his folk have taken up traffic with the Dwarves of Hadhodrond. This will be an interesting tale! You should write it all down."

Elrond tried to put forth an amiable face as he rifled with some desperation through the shelves of his memory, recalling no Parmaitë in the House of the King. But it was Elendil who scampered from around the corner - a recently-acquired nickname, then. Elrond always had loved Elendil, the quietest of the great-grand-nephews until he got to talking of his studies. His idealism was of the catching sort, and Elrond soon found himself recounting with much grandeur his journey to meet the Firebeards in their vast new home.

"Steadfast people, indeed!" Elendil declared. "What a shame that so many of our histories name them suspicious and small-minded. I would imagine it takes a special kind of spirit to venture forth and build such greatness from a little-known and much-changed world."

"Your Edain ancestors managed it," said Elrond. "Several times, in fact. Now -"

"And yet they are called noble, and the Dwarves merely acquisitive. Acquisitive! I ought to have a word with some of our record-keepers about inter-kindred bias."

Oromendil elbowed him good-naturedly. "You've never even seen a Dwarf, but something tells me you would defend them to the last breath were they fire-breathing, sheep-headed beasts."

"Neither have you seen the Great Eagles, who do take the form of frightening beasts, and you would leap to their defense just as quickly! What we have here is a deep-rooted thread of historical slander, leading as far back as Elu Thingol's first contact with Belegost -"

At least the House itself no longer seemed to grow like a rambling vine while Elrond was away - all these halls he knew, as they herded him into the library where the whole sprawling family gathered.

In the deep armchair beneath the western window sat an Adan Elrond would know anywhere.

"Sweet Uinen save us," Elros grinned, rising creakily from his chair. "That troublesome Elf is back."

Elrond rushed to him. His brother caught him up in his arms (his hands felt thin, birdlike almost, but still warm) and leaned their foreheads together. They held each other in the late sunlight, swaying, the edge between their black and grey hair sharper than ever.

This was how the Númenorean artists always painted them: facing each other, symmetrically asymmetrical. The King and his strange reflection.

Elros clapped Elrond on the shoulder most Mannishly and told him, "Dear brother, you've not aged a day."

If they had been alone, Elrond would have said, "Oh, kindly do shut up," but as it was, Elros was King and surrounded by his descendants, with the steward of the house lingering at the door.

"I can tell you wish you could say 'shut up,'" Elros added anyway. "Your ears always flick back like a bothered horse."

"I have so missed you."

"I'd have thought you had no time for that - Herald to the King sounds an intensive sort of business."

"Surely not have so intensive as Kingship itself." Elrond took his twin's arm and led him back to his chair, settling across from him in the sofa next to Vardamir, who offered a fond nod of greeting.

"Perhaps," Elros mused, waving a hand expansively. "I often find myself wishing I had chosen instead to manage a menagerie of loud and dangerous creatures, or to work in pyrotechnics. But do tell me of life in Lindon."

"We are in the midst of trade negotiations with the Firebeard Dwarves who abandoned the Blue Mountains, for one."

"Truly remarkable, the speed of their reestablishment," Elendil put in.

"Also," Elrond continued, "I must warn you that Círdan still wants me to press you for a return voyage effort. He says his folk tire of tying messages to seabirds' legs."

Elros snapped his fingers. "Oh, that reminds me - you may actually make some headway on that matter, this time. Our navy has a new Captain."

"Whatever happened to Minluzîr?"

"He was old as the mountains, Elrond. He died. His dear young apprentice carries the title now, with such alacrity as you never saw, and he is already on good terms with the Astronomers' Guild. We expect he might even come directly to us and ask our permission to plan a return voyage! Imagine that."

Elrond pried his mind loose from the snag of those two words - "he died" - uttered so quickly, just another piece of news. Every time he came back here, he always thought he would have grown accustomed to it (or reaccustomed, perhaps), and every time it struck him all the same. Elros had noticed his look and breezed past it. Vardamir had noticed too, and was now gazing fixedly at his own hands.

"That is good news," Elrond said, composing himself. 

At that moment, two smallish children, occupied in a tussle over the arm of the sofa, resolved their dispute as one unbalanced backwards into Vardamir's lap. "Apologies, Grandfather!" the little one squeaked while the older Man wheezed out, "My, Axantur, you're growing big!"

"Isn't he?" Elros beamed. "Oh, Elrond, you've not yet met our Axantur. Come winter he will have twelve years to his name, isn't that right?"

"Yes!" Axantur declared proudly.

"Go on and introduce yourself to your Uncle Elrond over there."

Axantur scurried to his kinsman and sketched a neat little bow, saying: "I am Axantur son of Nolondil of the house of Elros. You must be my great-grandfather's brother. Is it true he was once an Elf like you?"

A titter passed around the room - every member of the family had asked that same question in their own childhood. Elrond prepared his usual answer.

"Not quite, my child. We are Peredhil, born indeterminate creatures, tied to either kindred and neither. We were granted the choice to join ourselves to half of our heritage: my brother chose the Mannish side, and I the Elvish."

"I've never seen an Elf before! You're not so tall as I had thought. Or so... glowy. Elros was right, though, your ears really do move as you talk. I don't suppose you could teach me?"

Elrond twitched his ears illustratively. "We all have our secrets."

"We couldn't do it," piped up Axantur's companion (one of Manwendil's descendants, perhaps?). "I read about it. It's a matter of ves- vestigial musculature."

"You made that up," accused Axantur.

"She did not," said Nolondil.

Oromendil shuddered. "I'm simply glad Nórimë gets some use out of those anatomy books of hers nowadays, instead of trying to impress us with sheer disgust."

"The human body is not disgusting!" Elendil protested.

"It is when she makes it so," said Axantur, "and besides, last week she tried to tell me that eels have two sets of jaws."

"She did not make that up either," said Nolondil.

Nórimë puffed herself up. "See?"

"I myself have been out eeling many a time," Eärendur commented, "and I always -"

"What has any of that to do with Elvish ears?" asked Mairen.

"It's not -"

"It's because -"

"I only meant to remind you -"

Elros cleared his throat significantly, bringing the room to a contrite silence. 

"Given patience and a mirror, any of you could learn to wag your ears, but certainly never so well as you wag your tongues. Besides, should it come down to a competition, your Uncle Elrond would still thrash the lot of you ten times over. And as I was saying, he hasn't yet met our Axantur, who is a fine and bright child, with a strong spirit, as he has so aptly demonstrated. In honor of his birth, Elrond, my Vardamir commissioned a most impressive painting. See if you can't find it." He winked at Vardamir.

"Find it?" Elrond asked. "In here?"

"Yes, have a look around."

The family talked amongst themselves as Elrond peered about the room, noting only the same familiar tapestries (falling dragons, curling waves, spreading trees) - until he turned his eyes to the ceiling. There he saw, picked out in reflective gold and silver, a replica of Númenor's night sky, every star neatly transposed and glittering.

"Oh, that's lovely," Elrond said.

"Isn't it? And look there." Elros pointed above his head, to where the brightest star hovered over the west-facing window, over his favorite chair. "When the heirs of this house teach their children of the stars, I would have them start from Eärendil. For I said when I came to this land: Et Eärello Elenna utúlien, and all my children must know that they too can look to their eldest ancestor for guidance in dark places. But we've all heard that story, especially you, my brother. So instead, tell us more of your own." He shifted, leaning forward with his wrinkled hands clasped. "Tell us of the Autumn in Middle-Earth."

\----

Down from the high hills crept the forest, slowly at first, as a mountain cat who stretches and breaks the friable soil with its kneading claws. In the older inland trees, narrow rings and knotted scars mapped the decades of war they had lived through, but the new ones grew consistent and clean. In Autumn, they blazed.

Not so for the stones of the land. The coast these days still looked gnawed-apart. Gil-Galad said they could make safe harbors out of those deep gashes, given time - but it would take so much time.

Well, Elrond had the time, now, and he used it.

He wondered if all kingdoms were meant to be as busy as Lindon, or if that came from the unusual circumstances. There seemed very little nobility to it, only work: construction, the clearing of fields and the raising of levies, villages in need of lumber and oil and pickled fish, Dwarvish refugees rolling east in their clattering wagons to who-knew-where, Edain sailing off to Númenor in an ever-dwindling trickle, taxes, mining rights, disgruntled Sindar, and the attempt to establish a remotely reliable parcel-delivery system. At least during the war their concerns had been simple: they would survive, or they would die. Now, from the scattered and tired remnants of their people, they must try to gather themselves together and live.

Elrond had gotten recognized in the Grey Havens - a mason who had once lived at Sirion had known him by his hybrid appearance. Another time, in one of those lonely three-house settlements to the south where Noldorin families tried to escape their fellow Elves, a grey-eyed chemist had mistaken him for Elros - she was a deserter from the Fëanorian ranks. She had tried to run from him.

He had remembered neither Elf. At this point all the older Calaquendi ran together. They all looked haunted, traced over with scars, covered in ash.

But when it rained, yesterday, Elrond had heard a few of them singing. They sang quietly, sheltered beneath some hidden eaves somewhere - no epic history was this, no call to battle, no lament. As far as Elrond could tell, they sang only about the falling leaves. 

In the empty courtyard, their soft voices mixed into the rain.

And this morning, a gull-letter came in from the Havens announcing the birth of Elrond's first nephew.

He pushed his chair back and looked out the window. Orange leaves, red leaves. Even the newest saplings had changed their colors, celebrating some great occasion known only to trees - perhaps simply the victory of another year of growth.

Yes, he thought, this we can do.

\----

Grey seabirds whirled over the distant harbor, following the fishers home. From the highest tower of the King's House, the scene looked peaceful, almost sleepy, and the evening breeze brushed away the smells of smoke and manure and flowers that came from the city. The family had planted a ring of sheltering trees up here, a surprising burst of green. Elrond thought they might have found the single quiet spot on the island.

Elros leaned forward beneath the leaves to look out over the wall. "The northernmost wharf building in Rómenna," he said, "that is also new. That bronze ornamentation on the roof came from the Falmari, who seem to have made it their goal to cover Arda's every city in octopus motifs."

"You have one on the lighthouse of Andúnië as well," Elrond recalled.

"That we do, and a fine specimen it is. Can you really see the wharf-octopus all the way from here?"

"I can. And the ships in the harbor, and the gulls, too. How they harry your mariners!"

"Yes, I ought to establish an elite task force to intercept and neutralize this menace. For my part, when I look that way, I can only make out the endless blue of the Sea, and the ships and houses like one smudge of white. My eyes are still keener than most Men my age, though."

Elrond took a moment to remember that Elros was the only Man his age. He swatted gently at his shoulder. "Oh, I'm sure. But I wonder - could you draw me a map of Rómenna from memory alone? You certainly speak as though you could."

"Of course I could." Elros sighed fondly, paternally. "I watched that city grow from a cluster of lean-tos and soggy Men to the most powerful port east of Aman."

"Disloyal brother! What of the Grey Havens in my lands, where we build ships that can actually make the crossing?"

"I knew Círdan's Havens as little more than a cluster of lean-tos and soggy Elves - and those are worse than soggy Men, by the way. They may not smell so, but they complain incessantly and their hair refuses to dry out. Do you remember how the sea steamed, how we smelted all our shields into nails for the hulls of our ships? So eager were we to leave that place, some walked naked into the waves, for they had made rafts of their boots and sails of their clothing."

"Nobody did that," said Elrond, feeling his way back among the clamor and the salt-stench delirium, the ragged people stumbling through the camps with lists of their family, the tide turning over banners and bones. "And boots do not float."

"Perhaps not. But they would have done it, had they thought to get away with it. Nothing remained there that any of us wished to hold onto. I found that dragon's tooth, that great saw-edged thing -"

"-and you dropped it right back into the ocean, yes."

"Occasionally I wish I would have kept it, to hang on a mantelpiece somewhere. A few of my men did so. None told me of it, though, until we came ashore - we had arrived at a general unspoken agreement that all Beleriand keepsakes were terribly cursed, and nobody wanted to risk a dousing or a mutiny from their superstitious companions."

"Then what, your arrival to the island erased the curse?"

Elros turned his head to look at him solemnly, his hand going still on the stones at his side. "Yes, Elrond. Therein lies the difference between Rómenna and the Grey Havens, however lovely their quays or advanced their carpentry. My Kingdom is new, and bright as the dawn. My people build their cities because they need food and shelter and roadways, not for any remembrance of long-gone glory, nor any grand opposition of distant Powers. Here is a beginning, our very own. We are alive, Elrond - behold!" He swept his arm out in a wide arc over Armenelos and the harbor, his family's house and the Sea far beyond. "See now what we've done. See what I've made."

Elrond followed his eyes, all the way out and all the way back. Centuries ago, Elros had stared with that same fire into the distant West, where a star and a promise glimmered. Now he looked East, old and unbowed, the fire settled from an angry nervous spark to a great steady warmth like the Sun itself.

"I see," Elrond said. "I see, and I wonder at it, every time."

"Maybe you needn't wonder. It may come down to a simple matter of outlook - think of that tapestry in the public archives, the Tree of my family. All you Elves draw your genealogies sideways -" he demonstrated with a wavering hand in the air - "as river deltas. It's as if you worry you shall all dry up and run into nothing with time, or dissolve back into the water whence you came. But my House grows ever upwards and outwards. Yes, I know they designed it that way after Nimloth of the Court, and I know the Elvish way traces back to Cuiviénen, like most of their business. Still you must admit there is some poetry to it."

"Upwards and outwards, to the stars." 

"Yes, something like that."

Down below, Meneltarma's shadow fell soft and violet over the harbor, and the people put on their little lights.

"When one witnesses -" Elros started, coughed a little, and tried again. "When one witnesses the things we witnessed, one longs for a bit of room to grow, I suppose."

The land breeze kicked up, stirring the grasses forward in the hills behind them.

"Did I ever tell you," Elrond said quietly, "of the ghosts?"

Elros hummed, considering. "Only a little. It distressed you, did it not?"

"It did and it does. It was what came of a trickle of Maia blood and a passion for the healing arts, though. And I would like to think I used those gifts well."

"When have you ever done anything less? It took no little courage for you to stay behind in that mess, and selflessness of equal measure besides."

Elrond narrowed his eyes at his twin, sensing the stubborn echoes of an argument long since pulverized to nothing. "You were never cowardly nor selfish," he said, just in case, for Elros had always said the same to him. "Never."

"I know that."

"I know you know that."

"Good. The ghost-mopping job, though, did you wish to speak of it?"

"I'm not sure." Elrond plucked a fallen leaf from his hair, flicking his non-vestigial ears into the wind. "You reminded me of them, though, when you spoke of the Elvish problem."

"You may tell me how they looked, if you'd like. I still do not ever care to see one for myself, but I admit to my curiosity. I am too old now to worry over being polite to them anymore."

Elrond failed to suppress a laugh. "Is that what kept you from asking?"

"Oh, have your fun. I recall you asking, once, if the Edain's reproductive -"

"Point taken! Yes, I can tell you how they looked: like nothing, to most of us, though the Men sensed and feared them, somehow, as did the horses and dogs. I seemed the only one who could perceive their images. They..." He took a deep breath. "They were not fair, Elros. They looked like strangers out of dreams - bodies built wrong, faces swept away. A houseless fëa refuses the call for a reason. Most had died badly, cut to pieces or burned."

Elros inhaled sharply at the last word, and Elrond winced. "No one we knew, though. Not him."

He could feel his brother's eyes land upon him with a piercing weight, and he turned back to meet them. "So it is true," Elros stated. "About the fire and the sea and the jewels."

"Yes. Did you think Eonwë would lie about it?"

"He would if he thought he could protect the survivors that way, and you know it. Such a tale needs a primary witness for the telling, I would think. So, then. Where does Maglor wander now, and how long since you found him?"

They had both propped themselves up on their elbows; now Elrond dropped his head into his hand. "Five years now. He has made his home beyond our northern border, on the most remote coast of the sea. It was as you suspected: he did not wish for anyone to find him again."

"And yet you did." Elros's voice carried no accusation, only curiosity, and a far-buried note of fondness.

"I said I was too angry with him to let him fade away so easily; he said he deserved to fade; I said he no longer grasped what he wanted, much less what he deserved, and long had I known it; he said he could never be sorry enough; I said I knew that too. I made him tell me of their doomed mission. Then we stormed away from each other."

"For a week."

"Only a day, if you can believe it." He gave a rueful chuckle. "I returned with supplies, and this time we spoke very little to each other. He sang to me, though. His voice has not changed."

Elros sighed, closing his eyes with memory. "Have you gone back since?"

"No, but somehow I doubt he will stray far from there. I shall visit him, and perhaps for now he'll convince himself that I am simply keeping a watchful eye on him."

"Give him my regards. You think you can help him, then?"

The clouds fled over the eastern horizon, and Elrond thought about the rail-thin figure walking out of the mist, the voice that taught them how to hide in the woods and sang to them of light. At least with Elros, Elros who had listened beside him, he had no need to defend himself, only to tell the truth.

"I must try," he said at last. "I know not what else to do. Damn it all! I love him. Fool that I am, I loved them both."

From the corner of his eye, he saw Elros raise his hand to touch the cord around his neck. "All love is foolish," he murmured. "My people know this. I have told you how I met Tuilien on the crossing - oh, it was agony! Nobody gets a moment alone on a ship. The very embodiment of foolishness, we were, and yet we dared love each other. And our children loved her, though they knew as I did how little time we had together. And down there in that city we sing for each other and hold each other, though we have all done terrible things and we will all be wrenched apart in the end. People love not out of logic or merit but out of necessity. We love because it is sung into our nature. That, Elrond, makes this marred world holy."

Elrond could say nothing at all. His brother, nearly a shadow now in the oncoming night, turned and breathed in the mountain air. Next to him, Elrond felt very young indeed.

"Perhaps you have something of the Mannish attitude about you after all," Elros said, and winked at him. 

And as Elrond remembered the metaphor of the delta and the tree, excitement surged within him, and he scooted over to Elros to tug at his wrist, as he used to in their boyhood. "I forgot to tell you!" he exclaimed. "On the way out to Hadhodrond, I saw the most beautiful sight. A river called Bruinen runs down from the eastern Mountains, and tucked among the foothills there it has carved out a valley, hidden away and overflowing with life. We could make a stronghold of it, should war ever trouble us again - Valar forfend - but I would rather make a home. Imagine, Elros - once our kingdom establishes its strength far enough East, I could be Lord of my own secret valley. The soil is good for fruit trees there, and the river alive with fish, so all the tired travelers who come out that way could eat their fill and rest. And I will make a family of my own." He glanced back down to the lighted streets of Armenelos. "Like you did."

Elros threw back his grey head and laughed with joy. "That I doubt not at all! I know your dedication to your King, but your gifts, as you named them before, are wasted on that herald position. It is your calling to heal and build - who else would track down Maglor Fëanorion and offer him supplies?" He slung his arm about Elrond's shoulders. "Yes, you will have your riverside peace, and a family to disturb it. You will love them enough to change the world. I mean it when I say I do not regret my mortality, but oh, would that I had time enough to see that."

The birds had vanished from the harbor, and now the Moon rose, tilted and narrow. As the air cooled further, the twins leaned into each other's warmth.

"And speaking of children who disturb the peace," Elros muttered. "Vardamir can only hold the hounds at bay for so long. Come, we had best get back."

Elrond offered his arm to steady him as they began their walk back down. Elros lit his lamp, sending their shadows to scurry for cover in the corners of the masonry.

Elrond knew that their minds had turned to the same place: to a dim wood very long ago, where the two of them had pursued each other with sticks through the late afternoon. "We'd best get back," Elrond had fretted when they finally slumped against a tree trunk, dirty and winded and delighted. "Maedhros will have our heads!"

"Oh, let him," Elros had said. Then he took off running into the light, his short hair streaming. He had not hesitated for a second.

That was how he wanted to remember him, Elrond realized. Like that, dashing ahead, kicking up the pinecones and shrieking with laughter. Like this, leading him into the shelter of his house from the windy darkness.

And so, together, they made the climb down to their family.

**Author's Note:**

> Elrond visits Númenor in SA 407. he and Elros are 465. 
> 
> Hadhodrond = Khazad-dûm
> 
> Elros recites, "Out of the Great Sea toward the Star I am come." "Elenna," "starwards," is an official name for the island of Númenor. you may recognize a version of this quote from the lotr appendices.
> 
> the name Tuilien means "springtime."
> 
> fun fact: this was my first foray into silm fic! many of the ideas expressed herein wound up rearing up again in like, all my work.


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